Da Doo Doo Doo, De Da Da Da, Byo, Byeh, Byeh-Ho

Amy and I have been having tremendous luck lately in attending stellar rock concerts. In the last couple of years, we've seen Cheap Trick, U2, The Who, and, last Wednesday, the reunion of The Police at Staples Center. We were part of a crowd of 20,000 -- reportedly the largest audience the arena had ever housed.

We had nosebleed seats, but they were directly above and to the left of the stage. We were in a perfect position to look down into the drum set and watch Stewart Copeland commit exquisite and brutal assault by blunt force upon the taut-skinned tools of his trade.

I saw Sting in concert at the Greek back in 1993, and he did several Police numbers during that show, but that could not match the experience of seeing and hearing him perform -- indeed, re-engineer and re-imagine -- them with his original accomplices, Copeland and Andy Summers. The interaction of Copeland's athletic, Protean drums and percussion, and Summers's guitar (one of those guitars that seems to be singing solos all by itself), along with Sting's throbbing bass lines, is what made these songs compulsive listening back in the '70's and '80's, and what kept them on turntables, cassette players, cd players, and Ipods in the years between then and now.

Sting looked like every gram of body fat had been boiled from his body, leaving a thing of blond sinew and muscle. Copeland, his grey 'fro confined by a MacEnroe-like sweat band, resembled Jeff Conaway on TAXI. Summers's face was a bit chubby; he at least showed the effect of the two decades since the Police had last toured together.

The playing and showmanship was dazzling. The band created new versions of some songs -- like "Wrapped Around Your Finger" and "Walking in Your Footsteps" -- that I liked better than the album originals. In particular, during "Wrapped," Copeland got out racks of wind chimes, metal bits, and other fantastic pieces of percussion that he wove together into a mesmerizing rhythm track. As for "Walking in Your Footsteps," it had always annoyed me as a preachy specimen of one of Sting's "Hey Mister" songs -- I just can't take seriously lyrics like, "Hey, Mister Dinosaur, you really couldn't ask for more." But the band broke into a serious rock version of the tune that alleviated the, er, sting of the lyrics.

The cherry on the sundae was the big smile I saw on Sting's face (via the big-screen monitors -- faces were blobs from the stands). If there's anything better than seeing a master rock musician at work, it's seeing a master rock musician playing with sheer glee.

The Endless Wire

When the last studio album by The Who came out, vinyl records still dominated music stores, with their gigantic vistas of jacket art; CDs were an audiophile's plaything (if they were yet sold); and DVDs were unheard of -- Laserdiscs were the high-end video of the future.

Now The Who's album "Endless Wire" is being sold either as an ITunes download, or as a CD with a live-performance DVD inserted. Both download and DVD feature a science-fiction like cover with a man made of pixel-like forms climbing a staircase, with birds on one side and pixel-boxes on the other. And with both, the cover art is tiny.

As for the music: Well, it's pretty damn good. There's nothing with the pop hooks that make songs like "Squeezebox," "5:15," "Who Are You," or "Baba O'Reilly" songs that play on radios and TV throughout the decades; but they're at least as good as the non-hit songs on the albums where those songs appeared.

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing The Who tomorrow at the Hollywood Bowl.

Terror for Tower

A store chain that has been central to the history of rock in Los Angeles, Tower Records, is going out of business. The chain has been in and out of Chapter 11 a couple times in the last few years; in August, major labels stopped shipping to them because of payment problems; and this past week, the company that bought Tower's assets announced plans to close all of the stores and sell the assets to pay off creditors.

I've certainly enjoyed the Tower stores in Westwood, Santa Monica, and particularly Marina Del Rey over the years. (I only went to the iconic store on the Sunset Strip a few times.) The Marina Del Rey store was my favorite place to line up for Ticketmaster-supplied tix to concerts. That's something you just can't do at Itunes or Amazon.com.